Jessica Turner, an educator of more than 25 years with a background in instructional support and experience at both the primary and secondary levels, will serve at the Poughkeepsie City School District’s assistant superintendent of schools.
The Board of Education unanimously appointed Turner to the role in a special meeting Friday morning.
Superintendent of Schools Gregory Mott thanked the board for approving a candidate who, he said, brings to the district a wealth of experience at all levels of school leadership. She will be responsible for overseeing pre-K to 12 curriculum and instruction.
“She’ll be able to work with our five academic directors and their various areas of expertise and support,” Mott said. “She’s an innovative thinker, like they are. She’s student-centered. She believes in putting students and families first.”
Turner, a graduate of SUNY New Paltz, who received a master’s degree from Bank Street College of Education in Manhattan, comes to Poughkeepsie from the Hyde Park Central School District, where she was deputy superintendent. Previously, she was the Ossining Union Free School District’s Executive Director for Instructional Support for three years. For both districts, Turner implemented programs that helped increase student literacy and implemented programs that bolstered professional development. For Hyde Park, she developed the district’s instructional improvement plan, focusing on high-impact instructional strategies and vigilant monitoring through data analysis.
After her appointment, Turner thanked the board and said she is “grateful to join the district to be a champion for our kids and our families.”
Turner said she looks forward to “creating spaces” where children “can be brilliant, shine” and help them “find all the success, so they can move on and have amazing lives.”
After spending the first decade of her career as an elementary teacher in New York City and Beacon, Turner worked a variety of administrative roles – assistant principal, principal, director of elementary education and others – in the Middletown and Wappingers school districts from 2007-2021. In 2014, while serving as Middletown’s high school instructional leader and coordinator of deans, Turner was named Administrator of the Year by the Empire State Supervisors & Administrators Association.
Turner praised the student-focused approach evident in the Poughkeepsie administrative team members she’s met in the process leading up to Friday.
“They’re an amazing team that puts students and families first,” she said. “Our mission is not just something that is on the website. It’s how we live and breathe and function as a leadership team.”
The assistant superintendent of schools position was created July 1 as part of the district’s two-year administrative reorganization effort, in which existing leadership positions are being reshaped, consolidated or dissolved. The goal is to enhance services and programming for students and provide greater support to building leaders and teachers, while reducing supervision costs and streamlining office functions, to allow the reallocation of resources to support key initiatives.